


By The Catalpa

by XtaticPearl



Series: Pearl's Tony-centric Angst Week Creations [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Pining, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 05:16:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8315332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XtaticPearl/pseuds/XtaticPearl
Summary: There was a man who sat by the catalpa tree, warming the lone bench every day, day after day. Every noon, at five past twelve he would come, a baseball cap hiding his hair and large sunglasses hiding his eyes.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KiernaSerea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiernaSerea/gifts).



> I think this is more Rhodey centric than Tony, but I like it nonetheless, so here! Enjoy :D

There was a man who sat by the catalpa tree, warming the lone bench every day, day after day. Every noon, at five past twelve he would come, a baseball cap hiding his hair and large sunglasses hiding his eyes. He would worship silence for an hour, staring up at the unending sky and fiddle with a worn down ring on a frail, shivering finger. For an hour everyday, the catalpa would have a friend.

Perhaps for an hour everyday, the man too had that privilege.

“He was a hero once,” a native once told a photographer, eyes lingering on the far away figure in the bright sunlight, “People would fight for just a glance of him in his glory.”

“What happened?” the lady with the camera around her neck asked, eyes judging the best angle to capture the scene.

“They say he lost his home,” the native man said and the photographer turned to see him echo the saddest smile, one only those with a jaded but not faded past could give.

“Did he?”

“I think,” the native breathed in and turned to look the photographer in the eye, “I think he lost much more than that.”

Every third Saturday, the man would bring in a book. A smoothly bound leather cover holding pale pages of an unspoken past. He would stroke the bark of the catalpa that day, just a moment of warmth between the silent companions, and sit to drown himself in that book. On days of rain, he would bring in an umbrella, but never ditch the catalpa or the book.

“One day he is going to die right here,” a grocer of a nearby store commented to her husband, shaking her head as they passed by the scene one cloudy noon.

“They say he already did,” the husband replied without taking his eyes off the road.

“Like this town needed more ghosts,” the grocer sighed and leaned back against her seat, closing her eyes to replace the fading man’s sight with the sounds of Joni Mitchell crooning _Circle Game._

Sometimes the man would bring a dark walking stick, of metal rather than wood, dragging himself across the plain stretch of land from the road to the tree. The Catalpa never judged, even if passers-by shook their heads at him, at his adamance and the senility of old men. The man never heard the whispers, and even if he did, he never sought them out to tell them about the sun and the tree who were older than him perhaps. He never broke his vow of silence.

“I’ve heard him speak,” a young boy boasted to his friends as they parked his bicycles by the road, sweat pouring down their backs and mysteries brightening their eyes.

“No, you haven’t. Nobody has!” his newest friend scoffed with a frown, “They say he’s mute.”

“He ain’t mute!” the young boy retorted before pausing and correcting his statement, “Well, he wasn’t mute when I heard him speak.”

“Where?”

“On the internet,” the boy confided and eyed the silhouette of the man like he was ensuring there would be no eavesdropping, “They had a speech by him doin’ the rounds. For the big remembrance day, y’know?”

 “He gave speeches?” the youngest of the lot frowned and squinted against the sun to try and get a good look at the man, “How come he don’t talk now, then?”

“”They say it was his last speech. The one before the big purple guy did his thing, y’know? The -”

“Yeah, yeah, we know which guy,” a girl rolled her eyes but the narrator simply scowled at her and continued.

“Apparently he lost someone that day,” the boy said in a hushed tone, eyes wide and bursting with secrets, “His best friend.”

“That sucks,” one of the girls commented with a cluck of her tongue.

“Yeah, but that ain’t the worst part,” the boy continued with a wave of his hand, “The friend he lost? Apparently he loved him.”

“As in _love_ -love?” another boy asked with a raised eyebrow and the narrator nodded vehemently.

“Were they married?” the first girl asked with a curious expression on her face. The narrator’s face twitched like this had been the moment he had been waiting for and he beckoned them all closer to whisper grandly.

“That’s the worst part,” he said, pausing for drama before continuing, “The best friend was married to someone else.”

The catalpa stood by the old man through seasons, silent in its strength and quiet in its understanding. It didn’t wince when the man would discreetly wipe his cheeks while reading the book. It didn’t protest when he would clutch at its bark a tad too tightly for a tad too long. It didn’t mind when he would stroke it and whisper a goodbye for someone else every day.

“He has a ring, right?” a half-stoned blonde guy asked his boyfriend when they camped out at a distance from the tree, “I’ve heard it from Stan. Says he’s got a nice, platinum one. Old but still, clear what it means.”

“Vibranium,” his redhead boyfriend said dryly as he puffed a smoke out of the joint they were sharing, “Not platinum, vibranium.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” the blonde said dismissively.

“It’s kind of a big deal,” his boyfriend said after a couple of minutes, lying back down at staring up at the sky.

“Because it’s stinkin’ expensive and rare-ass?”

“Because of whom it belonged to,” the redhead said as he blew rings of smoke, “You know who it belonged to?”

“Some big guy who was like a hero or something?”

“Just the greatest legend of all times,” the redhead grinned with a shake of his head, pushing his glasses up his nose, “But you know why it’s even more important? Why it’s really strange that this guy has that ring?”

The blonde frowned in confusion, so the redhead played with his fingers and spoke directly at the sky.

“Because it’s not his. He stole it,” he said before laughing softly, “Stole it off a dead body.”

The bench went cold the week after Christmas and nobody noticed. Sometimes some passers-by thought about it but they assumed that the old man had learnt sense. Had learnt to let go of the past. 

A week after that, there was a large crowd near the catalpa, all men, women, and children dressed in black.

_We’re gathered here today, to celebrate the life of…_

The catalpa watched as the widow of the man stayed behind after the rest of the crowd left, a freshly dug and covered grave beneath her.

“Hey buddy,” she whispered as she stepped up to the tree, running a calloused but soft hand over the nearest branch, “Sorry he couldn’t be here last week.”

The tree let her run her fingers over its bark, waiting in silence for her to take a deep breath and continue.

“He was very sick, buddy,” she said, speaking quietly, here eyes afar but voice in the present, “I think he was sick for a long time. Maybe more than we saw. But he was also so strong, _so strong_. He never let anyone know, never let anyone see it. Well, no one except you, I guess.”

“I wanted to thank you,” she said after a pause, swallowing down a lump in her throat, “He had us, he had me and our family…he had all of us but…I guess it never really was enough. It wasn’t enough, except for the times he was here, beside you.”

She smiled a soft sketch of tired lips.

“It’s only fitting I suppose. Him feeling at home beside the only place where he still had…”

The woman trailed off and shakily brushed an errant tear off her cheeks.

“I know that you’ll protect him now. I know that he’s finally home now.”

Before she left, she left a leather bound book at the foot of the tree and let her eyes linger on it for a few seconds before turning around and leaving. The catalpa didn’t know why she did it, but just then a gust of wind blew and the book opened, pages fluttering open to pause on a page which had an old photograph attached to it.

In it stood three men - a blonde with bright blue eyes, a brunette with dancing brown eyes of his own and the third -

The third man was the catalpa’s friend. A much younger version of him, dressed in a blue uniform with his dark skin smooth and taut, bearing an air of tensed casualness. 

The blonde and the brunet were looking at each other, joy clear in their grins and eyes, hands held and gleaming bands of vibranium peeking through on both their fingers. The third man was staring straight but his body was turned slightly towards the brunet, like he was aching to look but couldn’t bear to. Below the photograph was a scrawl in old ink.

_Me, my Winghead and my best-man for life. We finally did it! Thank the aliens and Thor!_

Right below that was a script of a newer ink, a bit bolder and darker in its sorrow.

**_I sit here, beside both of you today. Every day now. There’s no monument, like you said there shouldn’t be. There’s life though, growing over your death. A tree with leaves of hearts. You couldn’t give up on the chance for another irony, could you, you bastard?…. Still, I come here everyday, to sit beside you._ **

**_It’s nice. The tree is nice. I sit and I hold the ring…_ **

**_I’m sorry Tones. But your ring was all I had of you._ **

**_Don’t hate me for having you this way, please. I couldn’t lose you completely. I know it’s screwed up but…let me have this, Tones? Please?_ **

**_Steve had your heart through your life. I know he did, and I won’t…I can’t compete with that._ **

**_Let me have it in death? Even if it’s a borrowed one._ **

**_Please don’t hate me, Tones. Don’t hate me for loving you…_ **

The catalpa wasn’t human. It didn’t have a heart to shatter or blood to bleed for its lost friend. It didn’t have a soul to be wrung out. But it felt pain, it felt it with the rustling of its leaves and creaking of its branches.

It felt pain for the friend it had lost and for the love he had lost. It felt a lot many things but it could do nothing about it.

So it kept its silence and watched over three souls, two who had died together and one who had never lived after them.

It stood and guarded the old graves of Steve Rogers and Tony Stark for years.

And now it had a new one to guard. The one of its friend.

_….We’re gathered here today, to celebrate the life of James Rupert Rhodes…_

**Author's Note:**

> I demand feedback. Please? <3  
> Also, @Kierna, I'm LOVING THIS! Muahahahaha!


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